People seem to be terrified that Jesus is as loving and forgiving and good as he is made out to be in the accounts of his life.  There seems to be a real fear that grace is how the whole thing works, is how the One runs the universe, is the only thing the dirt has ever been built upon.

People seem to be constantly pushing back against any interpretation of Jesus that might show him to be the welcoming, forgiving, loving person those first followers experienced him to be.

Take the story of the door.  A man comes up to Jesus and asks him the question that everyone has asked from the beginning of time, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”  This could be read as a question of genuine concern, “Lord, are lots of people that I love going to be excluded?”  Or it could be read as a question of genuine hope, “Lord, I won’t have to share your table with all those other people, will I?”

Because sharing is hard.

Jesus responds by saying he is going to launch into a story about trying to enter a narrow door.  Now, already, you can hear the person who asked the question—and many thousands besides—cheering, “Yes!  We knew the door was going to be wide enough for only a select few truly religious people to squeeze through!  I knew I wouldn’t have to share myself with all those undeserving creeps (meaning, ‘people not like me’).”

But wait! Jesus hasn’t started the story yet.  Here it comes, “Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’”

Now…sometimes we are told that this closed door at the beginning of the story is the narrow door.  But that just won’t do.  (Thank you, Robert Capon, for this.) Why would Jesus ask the people to enter through a narrow door that is shut?  No, this is another door.  Notice who this door is shut on: those that will try to enter his home by saying “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.”  

In this story, a door is being shut on those that are trying to get into the house by way of their associations, their time put in, their brown-nosing with the Householder.  They are trying to get in based on their own merit, by their own effort, based on where they’re from.

Sometimes this happens.  Sometimes people want to believe that they are in because they’ve put their time in at their religious institution, because they’ve checked all the right boxes, because they live on the right street or in the right country.  Jesus will have none of it.

He closes that door.

The result, then, of this door being closed, of this way being barred to come and participate in the goodness of God by way of one’s own strength or goodness or membership or citizenship is…to find the other door.

And we know there is another door in the story because of how Jesus ends this story.  After saying that a door has been shut, he concludes this way, “People will come (from everywhere) and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.” How can people still be coming in unless there is another door opened to them?  Why does it say that the first will be last and not out on their undeserving faces?

Perhaps because there is another door.

Which brings us to this narrow door that Jesus began talking about.  It is narrow, not because Jesus is trying to squeeze people out, but rather because he doesn’t want people thinking there is any other way of getting “in” than by the way of his free invitation and hospitality.

Jesus is really that good.  He is revealing a reality and a Giver that is really that generous.

People have found that “way” narrow for thousands of years.  It doesn’t make sense.  It means that I can’t say that I am more deserving than anyone else.  I don’t get any credit.  It means that others that I can see surely aren’t deserving are invited and welcomed, too.

And not everybody is willing to walk through that door.  It’s just too narrow.

And yet, it stands open to us all, to live within the reality that the whole thing will only and always be a feast of grace.

You can be the first to that party…or the last.